Different Seasons
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: AU. Being 5,000 years old never made falling in love any easier. A look at four old and and four new Immortals' lives from different periods in the 20th century.
1. Chapter 1

Different Seasons

1975

The summer of love had come and gone a long time ago. For some people it had been a lifetime ago. For Billie Boyd, it was a time she hadn't been old enough to appreciate. She was a self claimed 'above average' college freshman. She was a quiet woman who had been an outcast most of her life. She stood very tall and very thin, with a head of long blonde hair and a pale face which she normally hid behind large round, wire rimmed sunglasses. Ordinarily she was a lone wolf in everything she did, but that had changed since she finished high school.

Her first instinct had not been to go to college. No, she had run away to join the circus, but she had quickly found that was not the thrill it was cracked up to be. So she had returned to her hometown and instead spent many of her days hanging around with the hippies and other assorted deadheads. The infamous Summer of Love may have been gone, but the dream of going cross country, tearing up the road on a Harley had not. Unfortunately that had its downside as well. This, she had discovered one night when sleeping out in the open. She and her friends had been jumped by a bunch of hicks who hit them with chains and tried to shoot them. They escaped, their clothes torn and whole parts of hair ripped out of their heads but they were still alive.

Billie had considered trying one more extravagant adventure, but she figured she should quit while she was still alive. So she decided to try and settle down into a nice, peaceful, boring life and that was when she started attending the university. Shortly after enrollment, she had met another student, a man who she guessed to be in his early 20s. At first the two didn't interact with one another at all. But one night they accidentally bumped into each other at a movie and they'd seen quite a bit of each other ever since.

Adam. His name was Adam. Adam Barnes, a 20-something guy who also stuck out like a sore thumb for being tall and lanky and pale, and a student. Anybody who didn't know what Adam did with his days could guess he was a student, and the same could be said for Billie. Unfortunately that was not something she wanted to be known for at first glance, but it seemed she was stuck with it until something more appealing caught her interest. So she hung on at the college and kept going, and within time found out that she and Adam had quite a bit in common.

At the beginning of the semester, she had moved into the girls' dorm, but she had been thrown out of it for helping one of the local fraternities break into the women's rooms for a panty raid. Her actions were deemed worthy of eviction from the dorm but not expulsion from the college itself; and she noted duly if not bitterly, that the same actions committed on the part of the fraternity boys had not been deemed worthy of any kind of discipline.

Billie moved back to her home and considered it a large advantage because the whole house was her property and she didn't have to bother with any roommates cutting into her own space. And it made for much easier late night visits with Adam. On one Saturday in particular he came over to her house to pay a visit. Nobody answered the door so he helped himself in and called out for her.

"I'm in the kitchen," he heard her respond.

Adam followed the voice from the front hall through the dining room and into the large kitchen and found her at the table, sticking a large metal spoon into a jar of strawberry jam.

"What're you doing?" he asked.

"You said that we were going to a movie tonight, right?" Billie asked.

"Yes."

"At the drive in, right?"

"That's correct."

"And it's that one where the big red blob comes down to earth and starts eating people, right?" Billie asked.

"Yes, so?" Adam asked.

"One more thing, your car _is_ a convertible, right?" she asked.

"Yes," he was about laughing now, "Why?"

"Oh it's going to be very warm tonight and I imagine most of the other people will be coming with their tops down too," Billie said, "And if they do, I'm going to have a surprise for them."

"I have no doubt," the man replied with a knowing smirk on his face.

Billie's eyes sparkled behind her glasses. "Why are you staring at me?" she asked him.

"No reason," he smugly answered.

* * *

That night the two of them pulled into the drive-in theater for the sci-fi creature double feature. Looking around, they saw that Billie's prediction was right; the warm spring air had most of the other people putting down the tops of their cars. Adam looked at Billie and could tell she was estimating how much throwing distance she would have to cover when the time was right.

"Keep these things up and you won't make it to graduation," he told her, "They're going to throw you out of that college someday for sure."

"I wish they would," Billie said, "Being kicked out is a lot more honorable than dropping out."

"Well if you're looking to get _thrown_ out," Adam told her, "Just ride your motorcycle into the building, that did it for McQueen."

"Yeah…" they spent most of the movie just casually glancing at the screen while they talked. As it neared the film's climax, Billie looked and saw that several of the people along near their car were deeply engrossed in the movie. So much so, that none of them noticed her taking out the jar of strawberry jam she'd cut up earlier that day, unscrewing the lid and throwing the contents out of the jar, and onto the occupants of the next car.

The man and woman in the next car jumped up and started screaming and trying to get whatever had landed on them off of them and they wound up throwing some of it into the open convertible beside them and in front of them. Pretty soon the whole drive-in was full of hysterical people screaming and frantically trying to throw off the strawberry jam that they mistook for flesh eating creatures from outer space.

Adam and Billie were rolling around in the seats of his car, watching the mass hysteria and laughing at it all.

"You are horrible!" Adam told her.

"I know!" she barely got out over her laughing.

* * *

Neither of them went to class the next Monday. It was a warm, sunny day, the grass and the trees and the flowers were all alive again after a cold winter of misery, and they decided that being out in the fresh air was more important than anything the professors had in mind for them.

They had spread a large blanket out on the ground and laid on it, gazing up into the sunlight. As the day passed, the temperature got warmer and the two found themselves stripping off their outer layers of jackets and bell bottom jeans. Billie had surprised Adam by coming with her bathing suit on under her clothes, and she spread out to try and get some of the sun's rays into her borderline albino skin. Adam just removed his jacket and his shirt and rolled onto his side to enjoy the sun and the breeze.

"Adam," she said after about an hour.

He'd just about fallen asleep and responded with a drowsy, "Hmm?"

"Do you believe in God?" she asked him.

Adam turned over onto his back and folded his arms behind his head, "Sometimes. You?"

"I wonder," was Billie's response.

That surprised Adam. He sat up and looked over at her, "About what?"

"If God knew what He was doing, why did He give us each only one life? And why do they have to be so damn short?" she asked, "One life isn't long enough for us to figure out what all we want to do and what all we're good at. Do you ever think about that? This minute, this day, this year is soon to pass and there's no force on earth that can ever turn the clock back to this time."

Adam laid back down and said, not really answering her question, "The Bible tells of people who lived to be 900 years old."

"Well something sure screwed up the process along the way," Billie said, "Trees live for over 200 years, planets forever…why are we given only 60, 70, maybe 80 years to figure everything out? Aren't we of more individual worth than trees? And why is it…why is it that there's only one way to be born into this world, but there must be some five million ways to die? Do you ever think about that?" she asked.

"Quite a bit," Adam remarked.

* * *

They went to the movie theater the next night, to see the new hit film that had come out with The Who. It hadn't been out long but already it seemed to be all everybody was talking about.

"I don't get it," Billie said as they headed up to the balcony seats, "The guys can sing, but can they act? That's the question."

"We'll find out," Adam told her.

Sometime during the movie, Billie elbowed Adam and asked him, "Have you ever taken drugs?"

"A few," he answered, "You?"

"Once," she said, "No LSD though, but this movie looks like an acid trip if ever I saw one."

About halfway through the movie, Billie looked over and saw Adam was looking excruciatingly uneasy.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

He pointed at the screen and told her, "Those two relatives, the cousin and the uncle…they remind me of my brothers."

Billie did a double take when she heard that. She looked back at the screen and said to Adam, "I didn't know you had any brothers."

"Three of them," he told her, "And we're not on good terms with one another these days."

"How bad is it?" she asked.

"Well, to be honest, I haven't spoken with any of them for…quite some time now."

"That bad, huh…well where are they?" Billie asked.

Adam shook his head and replied, "It's been so long, I'm not even sure anymore."

After the movie had let out and everybody headed for home, Billie kept pestering Adam the entire drive back to her house.

"So what started this feud between you and your brothers?" she asked him.

"It's not a feud really, we just don't get along very well, and we go long periods of time without seeing one another," he answered.

"Well how long has it been going on this time?" Billie asked.

"Too damn long," Adam answered.

A minute passed before Billie asked him, "What are they like?"

"I told you."

"No you didn't, you said you have three brothers, so if one's like the cousin in that movie and the other's like the uncle, what's the third one like?"

Adam thought about how to answer that for about a minute before finally responding, "Mr. Magoo."

* * *

Whoever said you can't escape your past sure knew what he was talking about. It didn't seem to matter where Billie went or what she did, there was always somebody hassling her due to her past spent with the hippies, and she was considered one herself by association and due to how she looked. And she quickly found out the worst incidents to be on the receiving end of it was when the cops were on the other. Almost every day when she walked either to or from the college, there was always some officer coincidentally turning the corner she was approaching. And despite being in public and having several potential eyewitnesses, nothing deterred the men in blue from harassing her.

She could live with the insults easily enough, she'd had to get used to that her whole life. Her problem was that the cops never stopped at just verbal harassment; she always managed to squirm away at the right second before they could grab her but they came closer every time. There was one in particular, a motorcycle cop who for some odd reason was always walking the beat wherever she happened to be going. After the first few times she had told Adam about it and he had offered to walk with her to and from the college as a form of protection. Her response to that was just to laugh.

"You'll protect me," she said mockingly, "That's all good and well but who is going to protect _you_?"

He hadn't taken kindly to that remark but all the same the next morning he stuck by her side like they were conjoined twins. Nothing happened on the way _to_ school but on the way back they encountered the same motorcycle cop, who met them with his club out and ready to use. Adam stuck his head out enough to read the name tag on the officer's shirt that read: Peterson. The two men exchanged a few words and Adam, this not being one of his smarter moments, told the cop what he could do with his nightstick; instead he just proceeded to beat Adam with it a couple of times before advising him not to show his face around there again.

Billie had wanted nothing more than to steal the gun out of the cop's holster and plug him with all six bullets but instead she grabbed Adam and got him out of there as fast as she could. Once they were a couple of blocks away they stopped and she inquired as to how bad the damage was. He insisted that it was nothing but she grabbed his shirt and lifted it up and was surprised to see that there weren't any marks on him.

"I don't get it," she said, "I saw him hit you."

"I bruise slowly," Adam insisted, "By the time they show up I don't even remember how I got them."

The only thing Billie could think to say in response was, "He's a bastard, the whole lot of them are."

"I know," Adam said.

"I've got half a mind to drop out of college and get the hell out of this place as fast as possible," she said.

"Why don't you?" he asked her as they resumed walking, "You can transfer your credits to another university can't you?"

"I think so," she said, "There's got to be some place we can go without having to put up with these idiots."

That's what she thought anyway. A couple of days later the two students were on their way to an afternoon movie when they got stopped by Officer Peterson again. The vicinity they were in was for some reason very scarcely populated today, so there was no one around to see Peterson pull the gun out of his holster and hold it on them, while keeping it low so as not to draw any extra attention to himself, and he ordered the two to start walking ahead, and he would tell them when to stop.

Neither was able to think of way to retaliate without getting shot, so they did as they were told. They walked for three blocks until they came to the top of the hill that overlooked the city dump. Both had their hands up over their heads and it was starting to hit them why they'd been led out here, but it was too late. Billie was shot first, in the back of the head, and she dropped off the edge and hit a pile of junk below. Before Adam had time to do anything, he felt his back and chest being ripped open by a through and through wound as he too had been shot, and the second blast put him over the edge too, and he fell to his death in a pile of garbled metal.

* * *

Billie awoke some time later, her eyesight was blurred and everything was spinning, and her head was killing her. She slowly realized where she was and started to pull herself up and off the assorted metal parts she had fallen on.

"Adam?" she weakly called out as she tried to find him.

She turned and saw him just getting up from where he'd landed about ten feet over.

"What happened?" she asked as she got up, "I thought that pig shot us."

"He did," Adam told her, his voice slightly shaking, the mere sight of him said he was about to boil over in uncontrollable anger.

Billie ran her hands over the back of her head and didn't see any blood. And she looked at the hole in his shirt and saw he wasn't bleeding either.

"Adam, what's going on?" she asked, "Why aren't we dead?"

He helped her out of the garbage and got them both out of the dump and to the nearest church so they'd be out of sight and in a safe place to talk.

"We're what?" she asked when he finished explaining it.

Adam opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, and tried again as he told her, "We are Immortals. We can't die, not unless somebody cuts off our heads."

"You've got to be joking," she said.

"I wish I were," he replied, "But I'm not…I've had too many years of experience to know better than that."

"How…" it hit her what he was saying, "How old are you?"

"A lot older than you think," was all he was willing to say for now.

"So now what happens?" she asked.

"The only one who saw us die is Peterson, we might be safe sticking around here but like you said why take a chance?"

He had unknowingly started the gears turning in Billie's head.

"You said that we can't die?" she said.

"That's right."

She looked at Adam and suddenly had a big grin on her face, "Do you think Peterson believes in ghosts?"

Adam shook his head, "This is no joke, Billie, he knows we're supposed to be dead, you don't want any of his partners finding out about this."

"Who's going to tell them?" she asked, "You know what they say, dead men tell no tales."

And now it was Adam's turn to have things explained to him.

* * *

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked in a last ditch effort to try and talk Billie out of her plan.

"You got shot too, you don't want to make this son of a bitch pay?" she asked.

"If you're going to live for a long time you have to learn to get used to it, we all do," Adam told her.

"Yeah well assuming I _do_ live a long time, I'll get used to it later, but right now, it's payback time and payback is a bitch."

"So there's nothing I can say that'll make you change your mind?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"You realize what you're going to do, don't you?" he asked.

"I'm going to kill the bastard…if what you say is true that's another thing I'll have to get used to, killing people, why not start now and even the score?"

"Next time it won't be so easy," Adam assured her.

"I'll worry about that then," she said, "Let's go."

It was easy to find out where Peterson would be working that night and they knew that he did not work with partners, so he would be alone, it was perfect. It was dark by now and nobody would see them, but up ahead they were able to see the light from Peterson's motorcycle and knew that soon he would be close enough to see them. Billie reached into her coat and took out the shotgun she had loaded for the occasion and she prepared to take aim. The headlight on the motorcycle hit them and momentarily blinded them, and whether Peterson recognized the two people he had killed, or he was just aware he was about to run down two pedestrians, they didn't know; either way he started to swerve and tried to brake but he was just about to fall over, bike and all, and slide on the asphalt. But Billie never gave him the chance, she aimed the gun so the shot would just hit the gas tank and she pulled the trigger, and watched in mild shock and then sadistic amusement as the flames from the explosion climbed high in the night air. By morning whatever was left of the body would be beyond all known recognition and so would his bike, and Billie sealed their fate in making it impossible to link them to this travesty in any way, by chucking the shotgun into the fire, so that when the flames finally died out, it too would be impossible to identify or link back to its owner.

"Now we'll leave," she told Adam.

He stood there for a moment frozen in awe at how flawlessly it had been pulled off. And all he could do was shake his head in astonishment and comment, "You're a quick learner."

"Yeah, too bad my teachers never saw it," Billie replied, "And now they never will."


	2. Chapter 2

1952

Roberta Nash scanned the darkened area closely, she knew that she had heard somebody. The street was almost pitch black but as she quietly marched forward with her rifle in one hand and with the other pulled the brim of her cap down lower; turning the corner she saw the silhouette of a man with his back to her. The man seemed to be looking around for something or somebody. The 23-year-old woman quietly crept up behind the man and without warning, stuck the barrel of the rifle into the middle of his back and told him, "Stick 'em up!"

The man let out a small yelp of surprise and threw his hands over his head. Then he recognized the voice and turned around. Roberta saw that it was Graham Korda, a man she knew very well, namely because he was her current boyfriend.

"What're you doing here?" she asked.

"Being grateful that's not a bayonet," he answered.

She rested the gun at her side and said, "They send all the young, able bodied men off to Korea, and then they wonder what we do when the crime rates hit zenith, and we're stuck with the," she looked Graham up and down and added, "Rotten leftovers."

"Very funny," he dryly remarked, "And exactly how long do you plan to stay out here playing Ma Kettle?"

"Watch it," she said as she jabbed him in the stomach with the gun again. He grunted and doubled over momentarily.

As Roberta had pointed out, when the war in Korea broke out the draft went into effect again and pulled many young men from their home lives and jobs and this included men in law enforcement as well as the local night watchmen who made sure nobody broke into any of the buildings in the business district. So Roberta had taken it upon herself to make sure that things remained quiet and peaceful now until the men came home. She'd been doing the nightly rounds as substitute night guard for a couple of months but the time in which she had been acquainted with Graham went further back than that. They had met six months ago one night when they had crossed paths during a tunnel run.

Roberta was born with a wild streak and she had never been content to settle down into a proper woman's role. She just barely finished school, after which she ran away from home and she had been making her living off of wages placed on drag races, of which she was a constant competitor and very seldom the loser in any of them. That night she had been speeding through a tunnel with her lights off, supposed to be driving at another racer who was also in the dark, at a speed of about 60 miles an hour. The only catch was that Roberta always looked for ways to bend the rules, and at the last possible second, to ensure that she won, she hit her headlights and blinded the other driver, always causing them to swerve right into the wall of the tunnel. That was what had happened to Graham, only he hadn't been racing; he'd only had the misfortune of crossing through the same tunnel that she thought she was playing chicken with someone else in.

As predicted, his car had slammed into the wall, and when he got out of the mess, Roberta thought that she might have done some serious damage to him because it looked like he'd gotten a long cut running down his face. But as it turned out it was an old scar that he'd already had for many years, though he refused to tell her where he got it from. That had been how the two had met; and for some bizarre reason they had decided to see more of each other following the incident as well. In that time she had found out that he was about 30, he lived alone and his only family consisted of three brothers that he had lost touch with over the years. In time they were both surprised to learn how well they could get along with one another and from there; though neither knew how, it was only a few small steps from being able to tolerate one another to being in love. Roberta refused to settle down and so shunned any ideas of marriage, which she was relieved to learn suited Graham just as well, complaining that he'd already been married and found it the most dangerous and difficult puzzle to get out of, and Roberta agreed.

"Murder is messy, divorce is messier," she said once, "Might as well just stay married for all the trouble it causes."

"I think that's what I like about you," he told her, "We think alike."

"What a revolting concept," she replied.

On this night, business as a night watchman was slow as usual, and it was decided that Roberta could take enough time away from her post for a game of cards around the corner. The city shut down for the night every night and with everybody gone and all lights out save for the lamp posts, it became rather claustrophobic noting how empty the large concrete jungle was; not a soul around and nobody to help if anything should go wrong.

Roberta and Graham perched themselves on the sidewalk under one of the brighter street lights so they could see their cards.

"So tell it to me again why when they sent out the draft cards they passed you up?" Roberta asked.

"You know perfectly well why, I told you already," he responded.

"It figures, they take all the nice fresh young guys and leave us women with the likes of you," she said, "That's like trying to make stew out of the horse that's going for glue."

"Shut up," he told her, knowing she was only trying to throw him off by talking, "What've you got?"

"You first," she said.

He put his cards down and showed four kings. Roberta whistled and said, "That's good, that's _very_ good, but I'm better." And to show, she put down her cards and revealed four aces, and she held her hand out to him and said only, "Gimme."

Graham grumbled something under his breath as he got up and started to undo his jacket. He made the mistake of doing it with his back to Roberta and she took that opportunity to jump him from behind, and with the hand being quicker than the eye, she had managed to handcuff his arms behind his back.

"Alright," he said, clearly not amused, "What's the game this time?"

"Just a little practice," she replied as she patted him down, "It's been a while since I've had to do this, and if I catch anybody around here, I'm going to be ready for them."

"Very funny," he dryly told her.

"Graham," Roberta said, "Can you get out of those?"

"What do you think?!" he asked.

"Answer the question," she said.

"No, why?"

She laughed maniacally and replied, "Perfect."

He felt her hands reach around his waist to the buckle on his belt, but they were interrupted when a light shone on them from behind, and they knew they had company.

"What's going on here?"

Roberta turned around and saw it was O'Reilly, one of the older cops whose beat ended six blocks away from here.

"Nash, that you?" he asked as he tried to identify the woman with a gun.

"Yeah it's me," she replied.

"What's going on?" he asked.

Roberta turned around and hit Graham in the back and said, "I caught this guy trying to break into the pawnshop, but I checked, he's got nothing and I think he's just a bit tight. So I'm going to personally escort him home and let him sober up."

O'Reilly shone his light in Graham's face and gave him the once over before deciding that Roberta could be on her way with him. Roberta kicked Graham in the back and told him to start walking, and he did, and once they turned the corner and were out of O'Reilly's sight, they both stopped and Graham barked at Roberta to get him out of the handcuffs.

"Somehow I get the feeling this isn't your first time," she said as she took the keys out of her pocket.

"And could the same be said for you?" he asked as the cuffs opened and he shook his wrist to get the circulation going again.

"I fail to see what that has to do with anything," she replied.

"You wouldn't if you were in this position," he assured her.

"Eh, shut up," she said as she kicked him again. Graham spun around and glared at her as he said, "You do that one more time and you'll be sorry."

"I already am, I met you didn't I?" she returned.

They kept at each other's necks for days or weeks on end, and through it all they never got anywhere and only seemed to go around in circles to revive the same old arguments the next time they started fighting again. But in between they found they were able to get along with one another; they'd quickly found out that they were very much alike, they liked speed, they liked to cheat death, they both enjoyed a good strong drink and many of them, and neither had any problem fighting anybody and both had had their shares in life of kicking and punching and clawing their ways out of one fine mess or another, sometimes just barely with their lives intact.

Through it all, Roberta never gave up racing, anybody that was up for the chase she would take on and gladly put her money where her mouth was. She could drive practically anything and she won almost every time; so it was only natural that sooner or later she would make an enemy who was sore enough at losing that they'd want to kill her.

Naturally these kinds of things were never found out until it was too late; and it was no exception here when she and Graham got in her convertible coupe one night and drove off. Somehow or other, Roberta had been talked into letting Graham drive her car; whether that would have any impact on the events of that night were never determined. Leaving the town limits, Graham pressed down harder on the accelerator and soon they were going at 50 miles an hour; no big deal, until they came to a turn and he stepped on the brake and nothing happened. He tried again, this time stomping on the brake with both feet and still nothing worked; by now they were going even faster, so he tried grabbing the emergency brake but that proved futile as well. The needle on the speedometer went higher and they went faster and both knew that it was inevitable unless something happened, they were going to crash.

And that's exactly what happened. Graham tried swerving out of the way but the car wound up jumping the curb and smashing against a lamp post. The bodies were half thrown out of the car and finally fell out over the side when their dangling weight became too great.

* * *

When Roberta came to, the first thing that she realized was that her teeth were killing her and the pain went from her mouth all the way up to her forehead, and remembering the crash she was amazed that she hadn't been cut into tiny pieces. She opened her eyes and pulled herself up and saw both she and Graham had landed in the middle of the street.

"Graham," she said as she put a hand on her aching head, "Can you get up?"

"I can do better than that," he replied.

Roberta looked back at the car which had just exploded in flames and she realized what a narrow escape they'd had, and how just a couple inches more would've put them directly in the line of fire.

"What happened?" she asked.

She felt him grab her and pull her up as he explained, "Somebody wanted you dead and tampered with the car."

"They came pretty close," she said.

"They didn't come close, they succeeded," he told her.

Roberta laughed, "Oh come on, Graham."

He wasn't laughing however. "If you don't believe me, explain how you got out of that crash without a single cut on you?" He watched the puzzled expression on her face as she looked at her arms and checked her clothes for any blood stains. "Yeah, doesn't make much sense, does it?" he asked.

Roberta didn't know what to make of it. "We couldn't have been thrown out of the car before the crash…so what happened?"

"You aren't going to like it," he told her with a shake of his head, "But that doesn't matter now."

* * *

"This is really happening, isn't it?" Roberta asked as she laid down on the brick sidewalk and ran her hands over the sides of her head.

"It is," Graham told her, "Whether for better or worse, I'm not necessarily sure. But it's real, we're real, this is real, you're Immortal and you're going to live forever."

"How is this possible?" Roberta asked as she sat up.

"Nobody knows," he said, "I've been struggling with it for over 4,000 years and I haven't found out either."

"4,000 years?" Roberta groaned, rolled her eyes back in her head and hit the ground again. "So what now? Where do we go from here?"

"It's your life, and at this point there are very few restrictions in your way," he told her, "You just need to remember, keep your head, and don't try to kill another Immortal on holy ground."

"How come?" Roberta looked at him.

Graham shrugged and said, "Nobody knows, just like nobody knows what the prize is supposed to be, but it's been that way since before any of us were born."

"What's it supposed to be, like if you'd kill somebody on holy ground you'd be damned or something?" Roberta asked.

"Could be," Graham replied as he laid back against the pavement as well, as though he were trying to stretch out and get a tan by the light of the street lamp.

"But you don't believe that," she said.

"I don't," he agreed, "I think it was just somebody's idea of there being one place in the world our kind could be considered safe. Everywhere else, we're a moving target."

"That's comforting," she dryly responded. Then something occurred to her, "Nobody saw the crash, nobody knows I'm supposed to be dead, right?"

"Right," Graham agreed hesitantly, "But whoever tampered with your car is going to find it very odd that you were able to just walk away from a crash like that," he pointed to the fiery mess, "Without a mark on you. So if you want to stick around you better find some way to make it look like you were knocked around in the wreck, and that won't be easy because you don't bruise anymore, at least not long term anyway."

Roberta looked at him and said, "And you?"

He shook his head, "I'm no teacher, every student I've ever taken is dead, I've given up on it by now." He seemed to think about it for a minute before adding, "But, let it never be said I never helped one of our own kind in the beginning. A fresh kill is never a good one worth having anyway."

"That's a relief," Roberta dryly remarked.

* * *

Roberta had tried to put out of her mind how much things had changed in just a few hours and tried to return to her old life. She tried to ignore the headaches she got whenever Graham came around but it didn't work. And now that she couldn't die she found herself constantly thinking about death, including her own.

Every night she resumed her post as the night watchman for the neighborhood and for a long time things remained calm; but one night as Graham had just shown up to shoot the evening breeze with her, she'd caught a man trying to break into one of the shops and a chase had ensued. On this night, Roberta had traded her rifle for a .38 caliber pistol and she had it drawn and her finger at the trigger and just ready to pull it. She ran off into the night after the man and chased him halfway through the neighborhood; the street lamps cast enough light down so she could see him climbing up the fire escape of an old hotel, she had just landed on the first few steps when she aimed the pistol and fired a shot at the second floor spot where he was. The man fell back but he didn't fall down the stairs, and after only a second to recover, he resumed climbing. Roberta chased up the stairs after him and Graham was following right behind her, and he was also armed but she didn't know it. They had an equal amount of distance between them, when he reached the bottom stairs, she was up to the second floor and ready to shoot again.

But this time the shot that fired wasn't Roberta's, and instead she had been hit. Graham had two guns drawn and with one fired in response in the direction the first bullet had come from. Roberta shook off the momentary shock of being shot and continued climbing the stairs after the first man. Her chase took her straight up to the roof of the hotel and she found herself looking around and finding nobody. Just when she was starting to wonder if she'd lost her mind, she heard a noise from behind and turned just in time to see the man coming at her with a large axe in his hands. Probably, she guessed and found it odd she could even think at a time like that, the one the hotel kept in case of a fire or another emergency where they had to break down one of the doors. She moved just in time to avoid being cut in half and found herself reaching her hands out and also grabbed the long handle of the axe. She and the man stood evenly pitted against one another and wrestled for the weapon but Roberta took caution to remember that the sharp end of the blade was pointed against her favor.

Neither gained much leeway during the fight but it occurred to Roberta they had moved closer to the edge of the roof and it gave her an idea. Using all of her strength she managed to completely flip the axe, and the man with it, causing him to fall back and over the edge and the shocked look on his face as he fell was the last she saw of him, and a few seconds later she heard the SPLAT. Roberta went back to the fire escape and started down when she saw Graham two floors down and saw he'd had his own hands full; half in and out of a window down there was another man who was now dead, exactly what had happened to him she didn't know but looking at Graham she could guess just what the cause of death had been.

"You'd better get your prints off that axe," he advised her.

"Think it's going to matter?" Roberta asked.

"It could," he said, "You're not going to die, and you're not going to get any older, you won't look any older either so you don't want a life sentence in prison, trust me."

* * *

As it turned out the next day when the cops found the bodies, the two men were wanted in other states on charges of murder and armed robbery, so few questions were asked about how these two met their untimely demises. Roberta had been cleared, but decided she couldn't do it anymore, not here, she could feel the walls of the city closing in on her and she decided it was in her best interest to get out of there as fast as possible and go somewhere else where nobody knew her and she didn't know the town. Graham had agreed to go with her, but they'd quickly found out that changing locations hadn't done them too many favors. Everywhere they went they found themselves encountering more of the same kind of people and that resulted in more than one rooftop confrontation. One time Roberta found herself being the one thrown over the ledge and as she spiraled down to the street she was in awe of how slowly everything seemed to pass to her and what a hell of a view it was on the way down.

In the days and weeks and months that followed, anywhere and everywhere Roberta went she was still getting into fights with people, most of them she never knew who they were or why they hated her, and she still raced against anybody who foolishly believed they could beat her; and she also still had people coming after her who wanted to kill her, and she found it slightly amusing that of them all, none of them were Immortals. Always mortals, always somebody who shot at her, or tried to stab her, or tried to cut her with a broken beer bottle; and some of them got creative and tried to drown her in the ocean after tying her up, and once she was jumped by four men who hauled her off to an abandoned car garage where they tied her up, put her in the car, locked the windows and siphoned cyanide gas into it through the exhaust pipe. Since she knew she couldn't die, she didn't give the bastards the satisfaction of seeing her panic and futilely struggle for her life. But upon returning to life she had made up her mind that a Nazi and _only_ a Nazi would _ever_ endorse the gas chamber to kill anybody. She had nothing against the death penalty but she personally advocated for firing squads and the electric chair.

Roberta never forgot the faces of the bastards who tried to kill her or who temporarily succeeded in actually killing her; and she found the beauty of being Immortal was she had every chance to even the score. In life, Immortal life especially, revenge wasn't just a virtue, it was a given, a must, it gave her life an added purpose, and she strived to fulfill that purpose. She'd quickly found out that in her new life, few things were off limit to her, she had the money and the ability to get her hands on almost anything, and a large supply of weapons of choice were at the top of that list. She had an extensive collection of guns ranging from pistols and revolvers to sub machine guns, and they all got regular work; for a brief period Roberta had considered the possibility of making her living as a professional assassin. She'd certainly be able to get plenty of practice at it in the years to come if this kept up.

It seemed that Roberta was cursed to have trouble follow her around for the rest of her unnatural life, and maybe it was drawn to her because of her choice of lifestyle; but she refused to settle down and start leading a normal boring life. If she had to be hounded by the scum of the earth for the rest of her days because she was what she was, then so be it. After all it was her life and she was going to live forever, so she could do with it whatever the hell she pleased. And she did, and always with Graham right alongside her. 4,000 years had done a lot to him, but surprisingly he seemed to adapt very well to this current, barbaric, murderously violent, this Atomic Age.

AN: I know the chronology's off but I just couldn't be convinced to make this the first chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

1974

The good died young. Evil lived forever. If these two statements revealed to be true, Maude Tompkins was sure she walked a tight rope between the two and could go either way. The 27-year-old blonde woman who was described by those who knew her, as the female equivalent of Fatty Arbuckle standing near 6 feet tall and somewhere around 300 pounds, though like Fatty she always proclaimed, all muscle, was not necessarily by nature a mean person or a violent person, but violence had come easily to her all her life. It had also become a necessity in her life, starting at an early age. By now she had few memories of her parents and her life growing up, all she knew for fact was that these days she was alone and had only herself to rely on, a lesson that she had learned well years ago. As an adult she'd thrown herself into very violent and destructive behavior, her actions were evil but never committed for evil's sake, but rather a series of necessary evils as she saw them to be.

It was September of 1974 and the country was still mourning the loss of Buford Pusser the previous month; the sheriff of McNairy County in Tennessee, a man who had brought new meaning to the term 'speak softly and carry a big stick'. He'd had a movie made all about his life and his constant struggles to take down the corrupt forces in his jurisdiction; including those that had brutally taken away his wife from him when she happened to be riding with him out to a routine call. A second movie had been planned, and he was supposed to star in it as himself, but he had been killed right after that announcement was made. Officially the cause of death was listed as a car accident, but anybody who knew anything about him knew better, and knew that the other side of the law had finally caught up with the only man in the county who tried to serve the law. Aside from those who knew him best, Maude doubted anybody mourned for the loss of this big, righteous man more than she did. She had never personally known him but he was her personal hero. She'd said time and again that the world needed more of him, heroes were always few and far between and in short supply. And while it may have needed more of him, Maude knew that until that day came, she would have to do for the time being.

All her life she'd had to fight, it was something that when she was a kid, everybody said she would outgrow when she grew up; well here she was all grown up, and if anything the fighting had only gotten worse. The reason why hadn't changed, all these years later she was still fighting for her life and the lives of anybody else who needed protecting. In the city where she lived, the police had gone on strike for financial reasons a month ago, and now it was every man for himself; and as a result, the town where she'd grown up and spent her whole life looked almost as much like Vietnam as Vietnam did. There was always somebody causing trouble, every night there was something or some place set on fire and riots breaking out: people got shot, people got stabbed, people got their brains beat out, and people died, and she looked for the governor or whoever was in charge to resolve the issue by dropping a bomb on the whole damn place and getting it over with. The quiet little town where she had grown up now looked like a war zone and anything that could confirm that it wasn't, remained to be seen.

Due to her size and her immense strength, Maude had always had an advantage over anybody who tried to get in her way, but that wasn't enough anymore because every lowlife and his brother walked the streets with guns and knives and God knew what else; so when she took to the streets to do her part of neighborhood protection, she carried a large club with her. Originally it had been a discarded fence post but it wasn't fitted right for her hands for easy swinging and clobbering so she'd whittled down one end so she had a handle, then it seemed dumb to leave the other end like it was so she rounded it out so it was a real club, in fact bearing some resemblance to a very large baseball bat. At face value it hadn't seemed a very practical weapon of choice given what everybody else carried and how easy they were to conceal; but Maude also operated under the theory of her weapon didn't need to be cleaned, reloaded, and could never jam, so those were several points in her own favor.

She had her own beat that she walked, through her neighborhood and she also worked as protection at the bar on her street as well. People were bad enough as it was, even stone cold sober they could be dangerous and potential killers, but when they got drunk, and in a public place with a lot of innocent bystanders, then it was worse. Already she'd been called on to beat out several men's brains, and the ones that didn't succumb either quickly or slowly and painfully to death caused by skull fractures and blunt force trauma to the head, took the hint and never bothered coming back. With the local cops out on strike and no money to bring in the state police to investigate the matters either, these damn fools were just hauled off to the county coroner's office for half hearted autopsies with reports that never got filed anywhere and then were shipped off for funeral preparations, at least among those who had families to bury them, the rest got stuck in a potters field just like the people already in jail. And the places where they went down were left bloodier than a slaughterhouse but such was becoming a daily routine now and so the bars were found in need of a little extra cleanup before closing for the night. Really when you got down to it, it was just a modernized Wild West out east. The only law right now was in a fight, the fastest person who could kill was the winner.

For the most part she wasn't worried for her own life because she'd always been lucky in that regard, but there had been a couple of times that some bastard had also gotten lucky. One time during a bar fight, somebody had knocked her in the head so hard that she would've sworn as she went down that she could've heard a crunch in her own skull. But apparently she'd only been knocked unconscious, she woke up a short while later and found herself still lying on the bar floor. Her head had hurt initially but after a little while it went away; but lately Maude had been wondering if maybe there had been more damage than she thought because every now and then she kept getting headaches and a buzzing ring in her ears. The headaches came and went and were usually very brief but all the same Maude was starting to consider seeing a doctor about them and see if she'd been left with any brain damage.

But tonight, she strolled into the Four Leaf Clover bar with her club at her side like an exaggerated walking stick and glanced around to see if already anybody was getting out of line. So far everything looked to be alright, but she was going to be here for the next several hours and she was sure that before the night was over, somebody was going to get drunk out of his mind and start acting like an idiot, and when he did, she was going to be here to throw him out. So, she walked over to the bar stool specifically reserved for her since she could jump to her feet and go into action in a moment's notice, and planted herself there for the night and just watched everybody who came in, went out, got something to drink, messed with the jukebox or the pinball machine or the pool tables, and she also watched out the windows for any signs of trouble.

After about an hour, her head started throbbing again, _just_, she noticed, as some new guy walked into the bar and _right_ before the bell over the door rang, oddly enough noise never seemed to have any effect on these headaches that just came and went frequently. She got a good look at the new person who came in; he was a fat man not built too differently than she was, looked a few years older than she was, with an almost completely scalped head with just a little blonde hair on top. He was laughing in response to something the man behind him had said, he had a deep voice that boomed all throughout the bar as he chuckled at something that clearly he found very amusing. Already Maude had an idea that this guy was going to be trouble. She also noticed how he stopped right after he got in the door and seemed to be looking around, as if he was watching for somebody. But he shrugged it off and followed his friend over to the bar and ordered a couple of beers.

If he was going to be trouble, Maude knew it would be a while, one he didn't seem to be drunk yet, and two he was too fat for a couple of beers to take much effect. She looked up at the clock on the wall and mentally counted off the next few hours that she'd have to spend here before she could resume patrolling the streets for the night. It wasn't that she minded doing this kind of work; in fact it gave her a sense of purpose that the things she'd been doing all her life were finally starting to pay off in the matter of public wellbeing, but damn she hoped that those stupid pigs would go back to work soon, she was getting tired of this. Contrary to popular belief given her size and appearance, she _did_ have a life and she would like to get back to it instead of playing Public Protector all night every night.

She had just leaned back against the bar counter to close her eyes for a minute when she heard a bottle break and somebody start yelling. She opened her eyes and saw that one of the barflies had gotten drunk and was trying to cut another guy's throat. Neither one of these two, Maude knew, fell under the innocent and helpless category, so she was tempted for a minute to just let the two of them have it out and see who killed whom first. But she knew there were too many bystanders surrounding them to let that happen, so she got up from her seat and went over to them. She grabbed the one wielding the broken bottle and knocked him back against the wall; apparently he'd already had too much to drink to have many reflexes because he just slid down the wall and crumbled into an unconscious heap.

Before Maude could get out the words she was thinking, 'too easy', somebody else jumped her from behind and before she knew it she had three other men, none as big as she was but all of them of considerable size, ambushing her and knocking her to the floor as well. Uncomfortable but not anything she hadn't already had to deal with before; she swung her leg up and kicked one man right in the face and knocked him against the jukebox, the front of the machine shattered and he was electrocuted on it. As the circuit shorted out and the man became a barbecued crispy critter, the rest of the bar was in hysterics and everybody was torn between trying to get out, and trying to kill whoever was responsible, which only led to everybody getting into a fight. Maude got to her feet and using her club, tripped the man's foot out from under him, causing him to fall and breaking the connection between his body and the source of his electrocution, he was still alive but she had other problems at that moment.

In a few seconds the bar had become a madhouse and everybody was fighting with everybody else, and right now who was what didn't matter anymore because they had all suddenly become capable of killing somebody if it meant getting them out of their way. Using her own judgment, Maude swung her club and hit people in the head, the ones who didn't seem to be as much trouble she only put enough strength in it to shake them up a bit, but the others who she was becoming an expert at spotting on sight, as being those who had no qualms about taking whatever was on hand and slitting somebody's throat, she swung her club back like a sledgehammer at the strength tester and knocked them in the heads so hard that their whole bodies spun around as they fell to the floor. Where she was concerned, it was a long, ridiculous process, she'd hit one and there'd be two more to smash. In the midst of this, Maude came face to face with the same fat man who she'd seen entering the bar earlier, and without taking the time to notice just how outrageous he seemed to be acting, she bashed him in the head and watched him drop like a shot from a gun. As big as he was he made quite an impact when he hit the floor and a few people felt it shake beneath their feet, like an aftershock.

Maude had only time to dispose of a couple other drunken idiots who were trying to kill her when she turned around and saw the fat man was back on his feet again.

"How the hell did you do that?" Maude asked, not waiting for an answer she swung her club and beat him in the head again and down he went again, this time as he went down, two other people tripped over him.

The man groaned and his eyes rolled back in his head but he shook it off and slowly got back up again, and this time before Maude had a chance to bunt his head like a fly ball, he grabbed the club and they were equally pitted against one another trying to get it away from each other. Maude gained the upper hand by kicking the man in the groin and he went down, but only for a second and he used that opportunity to grab her around her midsection and knock her off balance and they both tumbled onto the middle of the barroom floor.

"Get off of me you pervert," she said as she kicked him again.

"Pervert, eh?" the man replied as he grabbed her by her ankle and yanked her back towards him.

Maude used her free foot to kick him in the head and it knocked him flat on his back.

By that time they heard sirens outside and saw lights flashing, but of course it was only the paramedics come to take anybody who needed it to the hospital, this was becoming a routine stop for them over the course of the month.

"Alright, knock it off!" the fat man told Maude as he shoved her back, "What do you think, this is the World Series or something, eh?!"

"What the hell is the matter with you?" Maude asked, "How did you get back up?"

"I'm a very stubborn man," he sneered, and grabbed her tightly by the wrist and jerked her towards the door, "Come here."

"I'm not going anywhere with you," Maude said as she dragged her foot closest to him.

But the man was persistent and he jerked even harder and said in a more menacing voice, _"Get over here."_

He dragged her out the door and they walked past the parade of paramedics and onlookers and around to a dark alley where they were in something resembling privacy.

"You," he told her, "Are a very dangerous person, _and_ very stupid."

"What would you know about me?" Maude demanded to know.

"I know plenty about your kind," the man told her, "I know if you keep making a spectacle out of yourself like you did tonight, then sooner or later you're going to get yourself killed, and I'm _not_ talking about those idiots back at the bar."

"Then what _are_ you talking about?" Maude sneered.

The man put his massive hands on her neck and shoved her back against the brick wall. A blinding pain covered the entire back of her skull and as she went down, everything went black.

* * *

He was still there when she woke up, standing over her, glaring down at her. Her head was still hurting but she thought it was odd how she couldn't feel the pain of getting her skull slammed against the wall anymore.

"What the hell did you do that for?" Maude wanted to know as she groggily got up, "Are you trying to kill me?"

The man looked down at her and said bluntly, "You were already killed, you just didn't know it."

Maude tried to see past her double vision and she asked him, "What the hell are you talking about?"

The man grabbed her to get her attention and told her, "Right about now your skull ought to be nothing more than a pile of powder rattling around inside of your head, but you're still alive."

"You're crazy," Maude told him.

"Not the first time I've heard that," the man replied, "I'm going to show you what I mean," and before she could see it, he took out a knife and slashed a deep cut into her forearm.

Maude let out a yelp at the initial pain and shoved him away from her, but she looked down and saw that something was wrong. What looked like little blue electrical sparks shot out of the cut as the wound closed itself up and disappeared. Maude looked back up at the man and asked him, "What the hell is that? What's happening?"

"You get headaches quite frequently," the man told her, "Always the same dull throbbing pain, always in the same place, no rhyme, no reason, nothing helps, nothing works, just comes and goes at random times."

"How did you know that?" Maude asked.

"It happens to all of us," the man told her, "In the beginning, some unwritten law, once you actually know _about_ it, the pain fades out, but that feeling in the base of your skull remains. It comes and goes, as people come and go…you feel it now because I'm here, if I leave, then it leaves as well."

That had been the beginning of a very long conversation between the two of them, two hours later they were still in the alley, long after all the commotion around the corner had died out, only they remained.

"What you're saying is when I got knocked out during that first fight, I wasn't knocked unconscious, I actually died?" Maude asked.

"Mortally speaking, yes," the man told her, "Then you became Immortal."

"And all other deaths to follow, just temporary?" Maude asked suspiciously.

"So long as your head remains attached to the rest of you, yes," he answered, "If somebody cuts your head off, then it's all over, and it's permanent."

"And why should I believe you?" she wanted to know.

"Because you don't have any choice," he told her, "Eventually others are going to come looking for you and they're going to try to kill you."

"And there's nothing I can do about that?" Maude asked.

The man chuckled deeply and said, "As my brother always said, we live, we grow stronger, we fight another day."

"Your brother?" Maude said, "You said Immortals don't have any children, how do they have siblings then?"

"Not biologically," he explained, "And thank God for that too, I'd be lying to say I couldn't ask for a better brother but _Mom_ would be too old by now," and he laughed again.

Maude stared him down and said, "You know something, fat man? You're not funny." At those words his laugh died and he glared at her. "You really mean to say that this is all real?"

"If it was not, could you otherwise explain what happened tonight?" he asked her.

She knew she couldn't.

"So what's _your_ name?" she asked.

The man reached into his front pocket, took out an ID card and handed it to her.

"Cyrus Katczinsky," she read, and laughed dryly as she told him, "Funny, you don't look like no German."

"That's because I'm not," he told her.

"Oh yeah? So where do you come from?" Maude asked.

"Brooklyn."

"_That_ figures," she said as she rolled her eyes, "What do you do?"

The man flashed a sinister looking grin and told her, "I'm a grave digger."

"_How_ appropriate," Maude remarked.

* * *

Within a couple more weeks, the strike was over, the police were back on their beats, the bars were no longer as much a breeding ground for raw senseless violence as they had been, and Maude considered herself retired out of the vigilante business, for the time being. Unfortunately before the cops got back to work, she'd found herself having to put her club to very good use and wound up killing a few more sorry sons of bitches who never knew when to quit or walk away. Her new friend, Cyrus, had helped see to it that they were put six feet under before anybody could get too curious and ask too many questions. In the days to come she had seen quite a bit of him, it was hard not to since by general consensus they should've been a set of twins.

So far time hadn't helped this new idea about Immortals get any easier for her to accept or even to believe, even though she knew that it was true. Time and again Cyrus had reiterated that one day other Immortals were going to find her and come for her head and so had taken it upon himself to teach her what it would take to survive. That had been unnerving to say the least, struck her as being ridiculous to say a little more; she learned how to fight with a variety of different swords, as well as a couple of large axes. After every single training session, she still swore up and down that it was the dumbest thing she'd ever heard of in her life. Even when Cyrus had been right and people had come for her head, even after she'd taken her first head, nothing could change her opinion about the matter.

"So let me see if I got this right," she said to him one night for the umpteenth time since they met, "All the Immortals in the world are trying to kill each other in a game, that nobody knows how or where it started, or even if it's real, and they're all trying to be the last one standing so they can get a prize, that again nobody knows if it's real and what more, nobody even knows what it is?"

"That's about right," he told her.

"How many Immortals are there in the world?" Maude asked him.

"Nobody ever counted, but they must be in the tens of thousands," he said, "Unfortunately we're nowhere near as popular as the damn mortals."

"And they're _all_ stupid enough to buy this line?" she asked.

"Whether or not they believe it is irrelevant, as long as everybody else does, the choices are damn few," Cyrus told her, "You can either fight and stay alive, or stick to your own beliefs and get killed."

"So then," Maude asked him, "Why haven't you killed me?"

That shut him up for a minute.

"You see?" Maude nodded, "You _don't_ believe there's a prize, or you would've killed me the day we met, instead of explaining everything to me and then teaching me how to stay alive. If you believed there was a prize, you would've killed your brother centuries ago."

"Which one?" he replied.

"Which one what?" Maude asked, "You mean you have more than one brother?"

"Three to be exact," he answered.

"And they're still alive?"

"Should be, I've had no contact with them for the past few years but I doubt they'd let themselves be killed off now after surviving nearly 5,000 years."

"So how do we find them?" Maude asked.

He glared at her and asked, "Whatever for?"

"I want to see what these other three missing links are like," Maude told him, "If they're related to you then this ought to be one hell of a spectacle."


	4. Chapter 4

1986

Torchy Albright stood before the court, and looked to the man on the witness stand. Her mission here was to get this man convicted and put away for life, though if she could swing the death penalty, that would be better. The 26-year-old raven haired woman who was identifiable on sight by dressing in men's suits for court, had already made a name for herself when she graduated law school at the age of 21, as the youngest prosecutor in the history of her hometown; a small place that didn't even register on the map between the state lines for New York and Pennsylvania. Since then she had hit the ground running determined to put the criminal bastards away, and for the most part she had been successful, but always at a price of death threats and attempted assassinations; still, it was her decision and she would stand by it, even if it got her killed.

"Mr. Hawkins, do you know why you're here today?" she asked him.

The 20-something year old man who sat in the court's hot seat kept his gaze down and said, "Yeah, because I killed a man."

An insanity defense had held no water with her, and now she was going to hang this sucker out to dry on his own words.

"Not just _any_ man, isn't that right, Mr. Hawkins? You're here because you chased, hunted down, and beat to death a 56-year-old man named Vincenzo Pellerito, why don't you tell the court why?"

"Because of the little girl," he answered.

"What little girl, Mr. Hawkins? Oh I know…you are referring to 7-year-old Sarah Smith, who was killed in a hit and run earlier this year in your neighborhood, is that correct?"

"Yeah," he said as he picked his head up.

"Yes we're all familiar about the riots that have ensued because of that senseless tragedy," Torchy said as she took a step back towards her table and picked up a sheet of paper that had already been offered into evidence, "However, instead of letting the law deal with the driver who hit her, a one Mr. Norman Finkelstein, you and your…neighbors, decided to take the law into your own hand and quote, 'deal with the Jew ourselves', that is what you told the arresting officers, correct?"

"Yeah," he answered.

"So you admit you're a bigot, Mr. Hawkins?" Torchy asked.

"Your Honor, I object," Mr. Hawkins' defense attorney, a slick lizard in his 30s, said as he started to stand up.

"I'm not finished yet, Mr. Blowitz, sit down and be quiet until I finish my cross," Torchy said.

"Your Honor."

The judge, a gray haired man in his late 50s who had been present for many of these what he called 'circus trials', spoke up and said, "Mr. Blowitz, the prosecution has no grounds upon which to retort as such…I however do, objection overruled and sit down. Proceed, Miss Albright."

Torchy pointed behind her towards the defense table and said, "In spite of your choice of counsel, you admit that you hate Jewish people, because quote 'that Jew thought he could kill a little girl and get away with it', isn't that so?"

"You know that's right," he replied.

"I see, however you also made such a point of telling the police, quote, 'I know a Jew when I see one', is that true also?"

"Yes, so what?"

"So…" Torchy put the exhibit down and pointed out, "It really goes without saying, a name like Vincenzo Pellerito is not a Jewish name, it is an Italian name, and Mr. Pellerito was not a Jew, he was an Italian immigrant. So how can you say you know a Jew when you see one, and still beat an Italian to death claiming it's to deal with the Jews? Or are you saying that they all look alike?" She didn't give him a chance to answer and said, "Why don't we get down to the facts, Mr. Hawkins? You didn't care _who_ you killed that day, you were angry and felt that somebody needed to pay for it so you chose the first person you saw who you did not recognize as being one of your fellow bigoted friends. Isn't that right, Mr. Hawkins?"

Just as the defense attorney got up to object again, the defendant shot up in the witness stand and wrapped his hands around Torchy's throat. The court officer, Marcus von Croy, a thin man in his 30s with black hair on his head and on his face, came up and beat Hawkins in the arm with his nightstick and restrained the defendant. Torchy clutched her throat and choked a couple of times before moving back as the judge banged his gavel and called for order. He declared a recess and told both attorneys to see him in his chambers.

"5 will get you 10 he's going to push for a mistrial, Your Honor," Torchy said as she took off her jacket in the hot office and stood dressed in a white undershirt and skinny black suspenders. Her tall, scrawny body never got her any compliments and to see her dressed for court, people said, was to get some idea of how it would look to see James Dean playing Perry Mason, or rather Hamilton Burger. She had earned quite a reputation for being uncouth and always smelling of a hint of whiskey and a pack of smokes while she was on the job, but every judge who'd ever had her deemed her behavior not bad enough to have her removed or jailed for contempt. But to every other lawyer who worked in the city courthouse, it was just a matter of time before she pushed the wrong judge's button and got him to throw the book at her. Her courtroom antics seemed to be the safest place to put that bet.

"How can my client be expected to get a fair trial after _that_ little display?" Mr. Blowitz asked.

"When you were coaching your client on what to say you should've told him to keep his temper under control," Torchy told him.

"Shut up both of you," the judge said, and he told them, "The longer a verdict is delayed in this case the closer the whole city comes to being set on fire. I am not declaring a mistrial, but if either of you this late in the game decides to pop in a surprise witness I'm finding you _both_ in contempt. This is currently your case, Mr. Blowitz, I advise you to rest it quickly."

"Yes, Your Honor," he replied.

On their way back to the courtroom, Torchy murmured to him, "Look on the bright side, Blowitz, either way this case is a win/win."

"How do you figure that?" he asked.

"Either your client goes to jail for the rest of his miserable life, or he gets acquitted and some good Samaritan civilian does what the court can't and shoots him in the head as soon as he's off the courthouse steps."

Mr. Blowitz stopped in his tracks and asked her, "Is that a threat?"

"It's a promise, you heard the judge, this city's about to get torn apart, people want somebody to pay and regardless of what the court does, somebody is going to hold your client accountable."

"Go to hell, Albright," he said.

Torchy turned around and walked backwards as she talked to him and said, "I thought you people didn't believe in hell."

"Ohhh," he said mockingly, "You mean us Jews?"

"I mean you defense lizards," Torchy told him, "If you did you'd know you were damned upon passing your bar exam."

"Oh? You really think your kind is only after the truth?"

"Why don't you chew on that the next time you _ask_ your client if he's guilty before making up a story of innocence for him?" Torchy remarked.

* * *

"Another guilty verdict, no surprise there," Torchy said when she and von Croy were off duty and downing a few shots of whiskey at the local bar.

"You keep that up and one of these days the son of a bitch on the stand is going to murder you," he told her.

"Now why would that happen when I've got you there to protect me?" Torchy laughed, "Remember the last murder trial when the defense jerked me into the men's bathroom and we got in a fight because I said I wouldn't make a deal? And in comes you to save the day, I could've told you not to bother, I'm pretty sure by the time we got done I had most of his brains laying on the floor somewhere."

"That may be true," he replied, "But it was my testimony that saved your ass when the judge found out."

"And I am _very_ grateful for that," she said as she downed another shot, "But one of these days somebody's going to catch you at the wrong time and we're going to see you spinning some poor son of a bitch over your head and then body slamming him." She laughed and then stopped and said, "Hey!"

"What?"

"I _knew_ I'd recognized you from somewhere before," Torchy told him.

"What do you mean?" von Croy asked.

"I knew the day you walked in for the job that I'd seen you somewhere before, it just hit me where," Torchy said, "You used to be a wrestler, I remember now, 'Live from the arena, Mark Von Croy, the Rabid Austrian!'" Torchy fell back against her booth laughing, "I remember you in the ring, wearing those tall black boots and that tiny little black…no on second thought I don't _want_ to remember that."

Von Croy seemed unfazed by this revelation though he did comment sarcastically, "I'm glad you find it so amusing."

"Hey, I remember you were a good fighter, why'd you quit?" Torchy asked.

"That's going to call for another bottle to explain," he told her.

"Not tonight," Torchy said, "I've got to start on a new trial tomorrow, and it's not going to do me any favors with the judge if I walk in hung over, though if I could puke on the defense for once I could die a happy person."

"What's this one?" he asked.

"Get this," Torchy said over a bite of her dinner, "This guy killed his whole family, wife, three little kids, and his lawyer is still saying not guilty…the headshrinkers got a term for it, they call it familicide, the killing of your family."

"It's not the killings that bother me," von Croy told her, "Just the reasoning behind them."

"You and me both, Hydrophobia," Torchy said as she lifted her glass, "If you're going to kill somebody, especially brutally, then you better have a damn good reason for it."

* * *

Though it was usually the defense who took advantage of a defendant's right to a fair and speedy trial, Torchy pushed it towards her own advantage and very early into the trial she got what she wanted; the testimony of everybody who knew the defendant, one Brian Losh, a 40-year-old man who looked about as friendly as a rattlesnake, proved so damning that his lawyer felt they had no choice _but_ to put him on the stand to speak for himself.

"Mr. Losh, your lawyer would have us believe that you're not at fault for killing your family, why in your opinion as his client and the receptacle of his justifying mumbo jumbo do you think that is?"

"Your Honor, I object," the hotshot defense attorney, James Wales, who had a reputation in the courthouse of a tough opponent, said as he stood up.

"I'll rephrase," Torchy said, "Mr. Losh, all evidence that police found during their investigation points only towards you as being the person who murdered your whole family, so if you didn't do it, who did?"

"Your Honor!"

"The police were wrong," the man said, "It happens all the time."

"The evidence isn't wrong, we have your gun, your prints on the gun _and_ the bullets in the gun, a nitrate test proved gun powder etched into _your_ hands only hours after your whole family was shot to death," Torchy said.

"It wasn't me!" he told her.

Torchy had spent some time talking to one of the psychiatrists who had examined the defendant. He had told her that men of this sort almost _always_ inevitably broke down and confessed to killing their families and told everyone why they _had_ to do it, that's what she was pushing for now. Torchy knew what the general consensus of prosecuting attorneys was; win the case no matter what, even if it meant putting innocent people in jail. Well, that wasn't how she worked, and she thanked God for the progress that criminal sciences had come that they could compare fingerprints and get them off the damnedest places now, though she knew the blood work could still use some improvement, but for the time being she worked with what she had and she never bothered trying a case that she wasn't fully convinced the defendant was guilty. It made her widely unpopular with people who thought she had ulterior motives for not trying certain cases, but she always stood her ground on the issue.

"You lost your job, your wife was dissatisfied with you, your kids resented you, who else had motive to kill them?" she asked.

"It's not true," he said.

Torchy turned and pointed back to her table and said as she went over to it, "The People offer into evidence this item marked Exhibit H, a letter written by Mrs. Losh to her…"

Torchy heard people in the gallery gasping and two women screamed, she turned around just in time to hear a gunshot and saw that it had come from a weapon the defendant had drawn out of his jacket. Quicker than the human eye could plainly see, Torchy thrust her right hand into the left side of her jacket and also drew out a gun and returned fire; her shot didn't miss, but right before it hit Brian Losh in the head, he got off another round and it shot Torchy right in the heart and she went down.

It took a very short amount of time for the paramedics to arrive but by the time they did, the courtroom floor was already covered in a large amount of Torchy Albright's blood. They got her loaded up on a gurney and rushed out to the ambulance, but one of the paramedics also called for Marcus von Croy, the bailiff who had been the first one at her side when she went down, to come with them since they needed as many details about exactly what had happened as he could offer if they were going to save her life. They got loaded up in the ambulance and it sped off for the hospital. Right after takeoff, von Croy shook his head and told the paramedic in the back of the ambulance with he and the critically injured woman, "She doesn't have a chance."

The paramedic nodded and started disconnecting the tubes that had been hooked up to Torchy to keep her alive; the blood IV came out, the heart monitor was turned off, miraculously Torchy held on through the 20 minute ride and died just as the ambulance pulled up to the hospital. The men got out and unloaded the gurney and took their time wheeling the dead woman into the St. Darien Hospital far out of the way for anyone of the general public to stumble upon.

"DOA," the first paramedic announced as they came in, "Torchy Albright, Deputy District Attorney, one gunshot wound to the chest."

"We'll get a room ready," the nurse at the front register said as she pushed a button behind her desk, "In the meantime get her ready, wheel her into the lab, somebody get every personal item off of her."

"That's you, Evan," the paramedic told von Croy.

He kept his mouth shut but stuck his hands through every pocket on Torchy's clothes and collected her wallet, her ID, every scrap of paper that meant anything and could mean nothing and placed them all in a metal bowl on a tray by the gurney.

"No jewelry," he announced, "No surprise."

A nurse came to individually bag up all of the slain woman's belongings piece by piece, just like exhibits in a trial, she noted ironically. Two orderlies came and wheeled Torchy down the hall and into a room where a woman doctor cut off her clothes and had one orderly lift her into a large sink built into the wall that was the size of a horse trough. The taps were turned on and the attorney's body was scrubbed and cleaned of every drop of blood. After which, she was put on a large metal counter, promptly dried off, dressed in a white cotton gown and put on a fresh gurney and wheeled back into the hall and down to a private room where she was placed in a bed and left alone in the dark.

* * *

Torchy woke up with a massive headache and no clue where she was. The room was dark but there were people standing around her, they looked like doctors.

"What's going on?" she asked drowsily, "Where am I?"

"Don't get excited, Miss Albright," one doctor told her, "You're at St. Darien's Hospital."

"Who?"

"It's a long story."

"This ain't the county hospital," Torchy said as she tiredly buried her face in her hands, "What happened?"

"You were shot during your trial today," he answered.

"How bad is it?" Torchy asked.

"That depends on you," he said.

It was then that Torchy was putting two and two together. She put her hands down and looked down at herself; she remembered being shot in the chest, she pulled down the collar on her gown, there was no wound from the bullet. She looked back up at the doctors and said, "Somebody better tell me what the hell is going on, and _fast_."

"Very well," the doctor said professionally, "You're dead."

"What?" Torchy asked.

"To be more precise, you died when you were brought in this afternoon," he told her, "You see, Miss Albright, you are one of a chosen few who will _not_ die, just as ourselves. You are what is known in the world as an Immortal."

"Pal, I'm not known for my sense of humor and I _don't_ specialize in gags, so you better tell me what's _really_ going on."

"I just did…all Immortals come into this world as pre-Immortals, and pre-Immortals grow up, and old, and can get injured and sick, just like mortals, but when a pre-Immortal dies a violent death, it awakes their Immortality, suddenly you don't get sick anymore, any wounds you get heal themselves automatically, _that's_ why you don't have a hole in your chest right now. That sensation that's pulsing through your skull right now, that is what's called a Quickening, you will feel that whenever another Immortal is around, and likewise other Immortals will feel yours when you are nearby. It's a built in warning system so you know when they're coming. Unfortunately with this Immortal life comes an even more severe constant struggle for survival. The only way an Immortal can die is if their head is severed from their body, and that is exactly what Immortals do, they engage in battles and kill each other."

"How come?" Torchy asked.

"Because all Immortals are immediately dropkicked into something called The Game, it states that eventually only two Immortals will remain, and whoever is left standing will receive the Prize, but what it is, nobody knows, but most Immortals are willing to kill one another for a chance at it," the doctor said, "Then there are others such as ourselves who believe the Game is a sham and that Immortals shouldn't have to spend every waking minute in fear for their lives."

"But mortals don't know about Immortals?" Torchy asked.

"Most don't though a few do, they're the ones that know to keep their mouths shut," the doctor explained, "If the public were to find out about our existence, we'd all be hunted down, so it's vital for everybody's survival that they don't know about us, and it's not going to be easy faking being mortal, _either_ way you choose to go about it."

"What do you mean either way?" Torchy asked.

She felt another sensation in her head and the door opened and von Croy stepped into the room.

"Von Croy, you're one of them too?" she asked.

"Oh yes, he's been one of us for a long time," the doctor said, "One thing you'll quickly learn is that every few years, you must assume a new identity to keep suspicion from arousing in people." He nodded towards von Croy and told her, "His real name, so far as we know," he laughed, "Is Evan Caspari. You see, Miss Albright, in places of high risk it is especially crucial that we have an informant to put the call in when a pre-Immortal is fatally injured. We come in, rush them out, bring them out here where everybody knows everybody else, and then decide from there what needs to be done."

"What do you mean?" Torchy asked.

"You were shot in the chest in the middle of a crowded courtroom, everybody saw you go down, but you were still alive when they saw you loaded up into the ambulance," the doctor explained, "Right now nobody knows anything, and you have two choices of what to do from here. Either we announce that you have died, and you move on to another town, another state, and start again under a new name…or we make a public announcement that you are in a very delicate surgery, and everything stays quiet for a few weeks while you make a slow recovery back to your health. And you never let anybody see that you have no scar, the inquiries that would follow would give you away. Of course we're well aware that this is not an easy decision to make either way, so take all the time you need to come to it. In the meantime you can consider yourself our guest; we're all Immortals here so feel free to talk to anyone about any questions you might have."

"How many of you are there here?" Torchy asked.

"A staff of 30 doctors and nurses, as far as the public is concerned anyway, you can just think of us as consultants, right now we have about eight other new Immortals here so you're in good company. So as not to be overwhelming, we meet with them one by one and explain things to them, as time passes we'll be encouraging for a group meeting so everybody can get acquainted and better understand what is going on. Right now the main thing is for everybody to understand that you have no enemies here. The one place that Immortals are always safe from other Immortals is holy ground, they can't fight there, and this hospital was converted over from a church. It was founded by a man named Darien Westmore 20 years ago, who decided new Immortals needed a sanctuary of their own until they learned what they needed to about their new lives."

"And where is he?" Torchy asked.

"He died three years ago," the doctor answered.

"Didn't do him a lot of good," she said.

The doctor left her alone, and once he was gone she turned to the man she had known as Marcus von Croy and said, "You little bastard, you knew this was going to happen and you never said anything?"

"You wouldn't have believed it," he answered.

"So…how long have you been an Immortal?" Torchy asked.

"Longer than you can imagine," he said.

"Has it been worth it?" she asked.

"It sure as hell beats the alternative," was his only response.

* * *

Torchy left her room and wandered the hospital to see the place and the people. There were large windowed mirrors that looked into other rooms where other new Immortals were being dealt with by the staff; and every one of them looked as confused as she was, some even worse. At every turning corner in every corridor there was a nurse or a doctor nearby who just smiled at her, offering nothing but Torchy guessed they were just waiting for her to start asking questions. The hospital, she found, also had a chapel, a sanctuary within a sanctuary for the religiously inclined, she thought.

After wandering the hospital for about an hour, Torchy tracked down the doctor she'd first spoken to and told him her decision. If she died now, then there was going to be a lot of trouble in the community; it was important that the public know she was still alive. She had a reputation and every criminal in the tri-county area knew what it was and knew she had everything needed to back it up. If she couldn't die then it meant she could go right back to work and next time she wouldn't have to worry about some nut smuggling a gun into the courtroom. So the hospital released an official statement that Torchy Albright, Deputy District Attorney, had come out of an extensive surgery and would remain in intensive care for an undetermined amount of time, but _was_ expected to recover.

The weeks passed slowly; Torchy went stir crazy in her room and so wandered the hospital several times a day. The hospital was far enough out of the way that they seldom had to worry about anybody coming out there who had no business there; so it was safe for her to wander around the hospital grounds as well when she felt a need to. Within time she came to get acquainted with the other new Immortals; one was a young woman who died in a car crash, there was a man who slipped and fell off the scaffolding at a construction site, two college girls who had been hit by a drunk driver who jumped the curb, and an older man who had been electrocuted on a job for the power company. Torchy thought the whole thing was like a damn AA meeting or psycho group therapy, everybody sitting in a chair in a circle around the room and everybody talked about who they were and how they died and what they planned to do next.

When the doctors finally said enough time had passed that Torchy could leave the hospital and go back home and resume her old routine, she couldn't get out of there fast enough. Over the month she'd been collecting mail at the hospital from fellow lawyers and a few judges who wished her well and hoped hers was a speedy recovery. Oh if only they knew, she had thought to herself countless times. She was officially released at night when there were less chances of anybody seeing her as she left, but as she walked out into the night, she felt another Immortal nearby and saw someone up ahead. Between the lights from the hospital and the light from the full moon out that night, she was able to make out who it was; she walked up to him and said, "Hey von Croy, or whoever the hell you are."

He stopped and turned on his heel and asked her, "What do you want?"

"The doctors were telling me if I'm going to stay alive in this game, I need a teacher, somebody who can train me how to fight."

"So what's that got to do with me?" he asked.

Torchy went up to him, got in his face and said, "So you, you little son of a bitch, you're going to train me, you knew what I was going to become, so you're going to be the one who makes me."

"Why should I?" he wanted to know.

"Because I just remembered something about your past as a wrestler," Torchy told him, "I remember now you didn't quit, you were thrown out of the federation after that last fight. Something went wrong and the ring collapsed, when they pulled you two out of there your competitor was dead and his blood was everywhere…they tried shutting it up but the word got out…he didn't die in the collapse, he died because you sank your teeth into his neck and ripped his throat out and took bites out of him. If that's the kind of murderous bastard you are then you _are_ going to train me."

She had said her piece and waited for his response, but she stayed in his face, silently egging him on to say or do _something._ He looked at her for a minute before a small, sinister smirk formed on his face and he said, "This should be interesting."

* * *

The day after returning home, Torchy returned to her workplace and announced that she was leaving office. The judge who had presided at the Losh trial was there to see her off and followed her in as she packed up her belongings, and going through every drawer in her desk and through several of the large volumes of law books on her shelves, collected a total of 21 handguns and 2,000 rounds of ammunition still in the boxes. Noting the confused look on the judge's face, Torchy shrugged and said simply, "I may be a lot of things, Judge, but stupid ain't one of them. I've always known what the risks are in this life and I've planned accordingly. But I can't do it anymore, I already had my chest perforated into Swiss cheese once, I'm not eager to try it again."

"If you're not going to work in the D.A.'s office anymore, what're you going to do?" he asked inquisitively, "That's all you've ever done."

"I know," Torchy said, "But getting shot made me realize there's a lot more out there that I want to do with my life, and I think that now is the best time to start."

Why not? She thought to herself as she cleared out her office, she couldn't get any older and she was never going to die, why _not_ start now? She stopped at a window in the corridor and looked down to the man standing down in the street waiting for her. Life as she knew it was over, and she didn't have any clue what the hell was going to happen next, but she decided she might as well start now and find out. Hell, now that she was Immortal she felt it was safe to ask, what's the worst that could happen?


	5. Chapter 5

1978

Billie stood with her forehead pressed against the window peeking into the hospital's maternity ward. 20 new babies all sleeping in their pink and blue bassinets; she counted, 11 boys, 9 girls, wasn't that the way it always worked? Couldn't ever be 50/50 for some reason, and couldn't ever be more girls than boys, it seemed to her it had always been that way, she wondered why? Most of them were asleep and not moving, and others were crying for something, she had also spotted a couple that already at the age of one day old managed to turn themselves over in their bassinets and get themselves undressed, those were apparently quite the overachievers. Billie had asked one of the attending nurses how long it takes a baby to learn to turn itself over and she had been surprised when the woman told her close to six months. Apparently that nurse never saw _these _babies.

That feeling registered in the back of her head and she knew another Immortal was near; she felt her back stiffen but otherwise she didn't move.

"See anybody we know?" Methos asked as he came up beside her and peered in.

"They had to put two of them into incubators, they were born too early," she said.

"Nothing new there," Methos said, "Thank God medical science has come as far as it had, a few decades ago they didn't have incubators for them so when the parents took them home, they kept them in the oven at night since it was the warmest place in the house."

"Hey," Methos felt his wife elbow him in the ribs a few times, as she often did when she wanted to make sure she had his undivided attention, "Hey, I've got a new question for you."

"What's that?" he asked.

"Alright, I can understand having one baby a time, I can even understand the logic in twins," she said, "But why do you think God created women, _human_ women, to have multiple births? Three, four kids, five, what the hell? Ain't a woman alive with that many tits to feed them all."

Methos choked on the laugh that tried to get out of him. Leave it to his wife to be so blunt about such things.

"That's why today they make formula," he told her, "Multiple births are going to be becoming a more common thing all the time."

"Why?" Billie asked.

"Now that they've gone and invented a test tube baby, modern science is going to be experimenting with all kinds of things just to make a point of showing the world they can do it, they never take into consideration that you need to be an octopus to care for them all," he told her.

Billie pressed her forehead against the glass again and said, "One kid at a time isn't enough for these women, they ought to learn to be thankful that they can even have kids at all."

Ouch.

This wasn't the first time that they had discussed the many questions of why Immortals couldn't have children, and Methos also knew it wouldn't be the last time either. Of course he knew he was getting off easy, Billie might like children but she had never spoken much in favor of having them either. But that didn't change the fact that he knew that she, like every Immortal before her and after her, wondered why the fates that be had screwed her over out of her chance to even have a child. Especially, she had noted, given how many women _could_ have children and just threw them away, both when they were born and now before with abortion being legalized. Perhaps you had to be a mortal to understand these things, but she was an Immortal and he was one too and to a whole breed of people who were born unable to have _any_ children, it just didn't make any sense that if a person _could_ have a baby and _was_ able to have it and wasn't in any danger of dying if they carried it, _why_ they would opt instead to have a doctor remove it and throw it away in the trash. Oh if only the shoe were on the other foot, he thought more than once, if only it was the mortals who were barren, just think if the 4 billion of them were never able to have any children, and only the few thousands of _them_ could. But, he decided not to dwell on the subject, instead he decided to try changing the subject a bit.

"I once knew an Immortal woman who _worked_ in a maternity ward," Methos told her, he didn't know _why_ he started to tell her this of all things, it just popped out, "This was…about 20-30 years ago, they kept the mothers pretty doped up at the time, I don't think most of them even saw their babies for the first couple of days."

"So what?" Billie asked.

"Well…during one particularly slow period, when she _knew_ the mothers would be kept in their rooms for a few days recovering from cesareans, she would come in and take one of the babies out of the ward and take it home with her."

Billie turned to him and asked him, "Are you serious?"

"Oh yes…she'd do that every so often, pick one baby, take it home for the night, wrap it up on an old sheet, keep it in a dresser drawer on the table, feed it milk at the same time she fed the cat…and then she'd go back to work the next day and put it back in its bed and nobody would be the wiser…it was a very short handed hospital."

"I guess so," Billie laughed, "And they never caught on?"

"No, I don't think so," he shook his head, "She was very careful about it."

Billie shrugged and said, "I guess it takes all kinds."

"You have no idea," Methos said, "See, she was an old one and I knew her a long time before that…she used to roam from one village to another, and steal a baby when nobody was looking, tried to keep them for herself, but we always caught her and took the baby back."

"We?" Billie asked, "You and your infamous brothers again?"

"One of them," Methos answered, "That was a _very_ long time ago, before a lot of things happened."

"I suppose I'll have to take your word for that," she replied.

They had been married for almost three years, and it was within the first year that Billie found out her husband's true identity when they unexpectedly walked into a challenge with a very old acquaintance. After the fight he had been forced to tell her the truth, but only a small part of the truth; Billie was still in the dark about 99% of his life and even she knew it. Though, Methos had already made one giant leap for his own personal record in that he had actually married an Immortal, and he had known from the start that he could trust Billie, so with time passing she found out a little more about him than she had before. Of course it was too soon to tell, but he sincerely hoped that she would prove trustworthy enough that he could confide in her what he couldn't in anyone else. That was the problem with living as long as he did, to some degree every Immortal had things they couldn't discuss with other Immortals, but few carried around as many secrets as he did. It was very easy to imagine just how lonely that could get after a while, but to do it for 5,000 years, even he found it inconceivable and he'd had to do it all this time to ensure his survival.

One thing that Billie kept asking about, though she never really pressed the subject, and neither did he, she always asked about his brothers; which was to be expected, it was his own fault for opening that can of worms, but that damage was done and now Billie wanted to know all about them: who they were, what they were like, when the last time he saw them was, etc. He sincerely doubted she'd feel the same way if she ever _did_ meet them, but he took solace in the fact that it wasn't anything he need worry about anytime soon. He hadn't even seen any of his brothers since before the turn of the century; he had no doubt they were still alive, but he hadn't had anything to do with them for almost 80 years, and for some reason he just didn't see the universe getting cocky enough to drop them back in his lap at this point in his life.

Billie looked up and saw a nursemaid come into the room. She'd gotten to know the young woman as well as she could since they never really talked to each other in the several months Billie had been coming to the hospital to see the babies whenever there was a boom in the local births. The poor dear on the other side of the glass was deaf, but she was able to read lips and she could sure as hell read hand gestures and follow where a finger pointed. She knew Billie wasn't the mother of any of these babies but she also knew that the young woman got a kick out of seeing them since she couldn't have any of her own. Billie pointed to a girl in one of the front bassinets; the nursemaid came over and found the one she was pointing at, one with the last name McTeague.

"What a horrible name to give a child," Billie commented.

"Why do you say that?" Methos asked.

She looked to him and said, "You saw 'Greed', you know why."

"Yes, I saw it back when it was the full eight hours," he told her, and added under his breath, "Eight hours of my life I'll never get back."

Billie elbowed him again and told him to be quiet. She watched as the nursemaid brought the baby over to the window and grabbed one of its tiny hands to wave at them.

"Hey," Billie said to her husband, "Why do you suppose parents always say that their children are beautiful?"

"What do you mean?" Methos asked.

"I mean look at them, they're all positively ugly," she said, "All pink and wrinkled like those bald cats, and they want to call that beautiful, my mother never had any trouble telling me I was ugly, I got along fine."

"I've explained this to you before, Billie, you never had a mother," Methos told her.

"Well I had a woman who raised me, that's close enough," she replied, "Anyway if she _wasn't_ my mother maybe that's why it never bothered me when she said it."

Methos checked his watch and told her, "We better get going, it's getting late."

Billie waved the nursemaid off and followed her husband out of the hospital, when they were alone by their car she asked him, "Do you think someday modern science will find a way to do that test tube stuff for Immortals too?"

"What?" Methos asked.

"Well since we can't have kids naturally, maybe science would find a way we can do it unnaturally like the mortals are doing now," she said.

"I doubt it," he told her.

"Why not? Immortals are scientists too, aren't they?" Billie asked.

"They are, but that's not the point," Methos said, "Even if they could do it, for normal people it's a very chancy thing as it is, for our kind the odds will be even worse, it wouldn't be worth it."

"But you don't know that," Billie pointed out.

"No, but give it about ten years and let's see what progress the mortals can make before we start counting any chickens," Methos said as he got in the driver's side.

In response, Billie clucked and squawked as she got in beside him and she reached over and pecked him sharply with her teeth.

"Very funny," he replied in his usual cynical tone.

"I got a kick out of it," she said with a small smirk.

A/N: Like it or hate it, I'm anxious to know what everybody thinks of this story, feel free to sound off.


	6. Chapter 6

1965

Roberta picked up the morning paper and skimmed over it for any headlines that particularly jumped out, and she found one right on the front page and took it in to show her husband. Kronos was seated at the kitchen table trying to figure out why every time he turned on the radio now he got electrocuted. Roberta came in and spoke to him but her words were a muffled mess of mumbo jumbo. Kronos looked up and saw the reason why and said, "You want to try taking that screwdriver out of your mouth and say it again?"

Roberta opened her mouth and dropped the small screwdriver on the table and slapped the paper down and told him, "See that? That crook Johnson signed off on a new law, anybody found burning their draft cards spends 5 years in prison."

Kronos picked up the paper and asked, "Now what the hell does he think _that's_ going to do?"

"Beats the hell out of me," Roberta replied, "They burn the cards because they won't go to war, and the answer is instead of sending them to war they put them in American jails…and 5 years, hell, by the time these guys get out, the war'll probably be over and _then_ what will this pony show have been for?" She leaned over the table and poked her husband repeatedly and said, "Hey, explain something to me."

"What?" he asked as he looked up from his paper.

"Okay," Roberta counted off on her fingers, "John F. Kennedy gets his head blown off, Johnson comes into office, Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy, so this bum, this Jack Ruby or whatever the hell they call him, he comes up as they're loading Oswald into the prison van and blows him away, and now good ol' Jack is sitting in prison in_stead_ of Harvey, waiting for the death penalty, so he's going to be killed next."

"So?" Kronos asked, already lost and losing interest in whatever she was saying.

"So when is somebody going to come up and kill Johnson next?" Roberta asked, "Isn't that the way these ugly cycles are supposed to work?"

"Give it time," he said, "Nobody ever gets away with an assassination of the president, but that never stops anybody from trying."

"I wish they would, I get tired of seeing his ugly puss on the TV, every time this guy sneezes they feel a need to broadcast it for the world to see, and then we can't watch Gilligan's Island."

"Well, we trade one idiot for another," he told her.

Roberta sat down beside him and asked, "Got the radio fixed yet?"

"No," he answered.

"You know, I still can't believe that somebody actually killed that guy Kennedy," Roberta said.

"You just can't believe it due to the circumstances present at the time he was shot," Kronos told her.

"Yeah," Roberta recalled, "You and me in the middle of all those people watching the motorcade, and I can still remember saying 'what do you think the odds are when the car comes by I can spit on his head?' and as the car comes by, his brains are splattered all over his wife, what're the odds?"

Kronos was laughing so hard by that time that he slammed his head against the table, "You're just lucky they never found out, otherwise every time you sneezed everybody would be running for cover."

"Alright, so explain something about this situation in Vietnam to me," Roberta told him, "We drop two bombs on Japan in World War II and that's good enough to end the war and bring the Allies home. So why don't we just drop another bomb on North Vietnam and get it over with?"

"Because you forget, my dear," Kronos answered, "As far as the government and those twits in Congress are concerned, this _isn't_ a war, first it was training, and then it was advisories, and then it was a police sanction, and now it's a conflict, but they're not willing to admit it's a war."

"But all the same without calling it a war it's fair game to go over there and shoot them all and blow them up on a smaller scale," Roberta pointed out.

"Exactly," he responded, "That's always been the beauty of war, it never had to make one damn bit of sense to exist."

"Alright, I've got another question for you," Roberta said, "Why do you think this military is so stupid it only lets women be doctors and nurses, not soldiers?"

"Beats the hell out of me," Kronos answered, "If the Army thinks women are incapable of killing people in warfare then they're in for one rude awakening."

"You mean they used to let women join the armies before," Roberta said more than asked.

"Well, whether they allowed it or not is irrelevant," Kronos told her, "They were there…believe me, as ugly as some women used to be it was _very_ easy for them to slip in without drawing any attention to themselves."

"Very funny," Roberta dryly remarked.

"I mean it, believe me _you_ would've gotten in with little trouble," Kronos said.

Roberta kicked him under the table.

"Believe me if I'd had the choice I'd rather have gone to Korea and helped blow their soldiers to hell, than stay behind here playing night watchman and spending my nights with _you_," she replied.

"Oh good, I thought it was just me," Kronos said with a small chuckle.

"Hey," Roberta reached over and jabbed him with the nail of one finger, "You remember what tonight is, don't you?"

"Night we put the trash out?" Kronos asked. Roberta picked up the glass pitcher of orange juice to break it over his head when he moved to stop her and said, "Alright, alright, of course I remember our anniversary, how could I forget…worst day of my life."

Roberta stomped on his foot under the table.

"And it gets worse all the time," he added.

* * *

Kronos turned over in the bed and felt a cold pillow under his hand. He opened one eye, and then the other and saw that the other side of the bed was empty. He pushed back the covers and pushed up on his knees and looked around the room. The balcony doors were open, tiredly, he got out of bed and went over to the doors and stepped out on the balcony and found his wife slumped back against the railing, wrapped up in a sheet from the bed.

"Hey," he said quietly as he knelt down beside her.

"Hey," she replied even quieter.

He didn't have to ask what was the matter, he knew, it was a recurring subject that each tried to avoid bringing up with the other, but it still worked its way into their daily life.

"Kronos, how long we been married now?" Roberta asked.

"Ten years tonight," he answered.

Roberta nodded and said, "You know, I don't think I believed you at first, but you were serious, you mean it's going to be like this from here on out? And we're _never_ going to have kids, none of us will?"

"I'm sorry, but I tried to tell you when this all started long ago," he replied.

Roberta tightened the sheet around her and said, "You know, I'm not sure I'd even want kids, but who made it their right to see to it that _none_ of us ever had the chance? It sounds like something the Nazis came up with."

"Unfortunately this precedes them by about 9,000 years," Kronos told her as he sat down beside her and put his arm around her and pulled her towards him.

"And you're 5,000 years old, you've _never_ had kids?"

"Well…that's all in how you look at it," he answered, "Of course _any_ Immortal who's been married to a mortal is going to _have_ kids, just none of their own, _get_ them is more like it. Widows are always a good place to look, or _were_, you could always expect to find plenty of brats there."

Roberta nodded quietly and stared straight ahead at nothing; rather she seemed to be looking past the railing on the balcony, past everything straight ahead as far as the eye could see, towards something so far off at another time or place that even Kronos couldn't see what it was, and he didn't bother trying either. She leaned further back against the wooden rails and asked, "So how long do you think this damn war's gonna last?"

"Consider the competency of the people in charge of it, or lack thereof," Kronos told her, "I can see it carrying on for 20 years easily."

"Canada's going to get crowded long before that," Roberta said, "Okay, new question, who do you think's going to win it?"

"Well it won't be _this_ side, you can be sure of that," Kronos answered.

"How do you know?" she asked.

"What're they over there fighting for? Nothing. Wars are only won when there's something at stake for the soldiers involved," he told her, "But since this government is incapable of even admitting it _is_ a war, they can't even tell the soldiers _why_ they're there, or _what_ they're there for. Now a truly good war has to have a reason to exist, it _has_ to be something more than just 'kill and win', otherwise it'd be like a stupid football game."

"That said, would you define yourself as being a good soldier?" Roberta asked.

"I was better than a soldier," Kronos corrected her, "Soldiers answer to a higher rank."

"Generals," she said.

"I answered to no one," he told her.

Roberta yawned and rested her head on his shoulder and murmured, "Must be nice."

"It was," he said, and shoved her back, more an exaggerated action than anything, like the overdramatic pantomime of the silent films, "Today the weapons are more advanced, but the methods of war are downright sloppy."

"Hmmm," Roberta said as she leaned against him again with her head down and her eyes closed.

"They had the right idea in maximizing the number of casualties per hit, saves a lot of time, but it's become so damn _impersonal_, what fun in destroying an enemy you never even see face to face before disemboweling him?"

"Mmm-hmm," Roberta hummed groggily.

"Are you even listening to me?" Kronos asked, and laughed as she shook her head no. "That's what I thought, come on," he grabbed her and pulled her to her feet and walked her back into the bedroom and pushed her down on the bed.

"Kronos," Roberta tiredly said as she lifted her head an inch from the pillow and opened her eyes to the tiniest slit, "You aren't _really_ sorry you married me, are you?" she asked with a knowing smirk on her face.

He took a minute to answer her and when he finally did he said, "I could do worse."

"You _have_ done worse," Roberta replied with a small laugh.

Kronos laughed in response and leaned in to kiss her, once on the mouth and once on her forehead, and he told her, "Go to sleep."

"I will if you're staying," she said.

He pulled back the covers and slipped in beside her and asked her, "Where else would I go? I'm stuck with you after all."

"What about your brothers?" Roberta asked.

"Oh…not that again, don't start tonight," he said warningly.

"Come on, Kronos," Roberta said as she reached over and grabbed his arm, "Why won't you tell me about them?"

"Roberta, I haven't seen any of them in over 70 years," Kronos told her, "I know how they are, when they don't want to be found, they _aren't_…when they decide to disrupt my life again, _then_ I'll tell you about them."

"All about them?" she asked.

"_All_ about them, everything you _want_ to know, and plenty of things you probably _don't_," he answered.

"That's all I ask," Roberta said, then leaned over to kiss him and said, "You need to get some sleep, you're starting to turn into an old grouch."

Kronos growled in response and grabbed her by her shoulders and flipped her over and was on top of her, Roberta laughed and said, "I suppose there's one good thing about not having kids."

"What's that?" he asked as he let go of the sheet she was still wrapped up in.

"Think about it, we've been married for ten years now, by now we'd have at least a dozen of them," she told him.


	7. Chapter 7

1978

"A 30 to 1 shot on a horse and it winds up being the winner," Maude said as she thumbed through the money won on the bet, "Who would've guessed? That horse looked like it was ready for the glue factory."

"That's _why_ the odds against it winning were as big as they were," Silas told her as they left the racetrack that afternoon.

"We've been going to the tracks for two years now and we always win, you sure know your horses," Maude commented as she pocketed the money.

Silas chuckled and reminded her, "I ought to."

Maude chuckled in response and said, "I guess there's one advantage to being older than dirt, you know horses as well as anything."

"Hey," Silas reached over and poked his wife to get her attention, and when she looked ready to bite his finger off he said to her, "Is that idiot friend of yours still coming to our house for the weekend?"

"No," she answered, "We're going to his."

"Oh joy," Silas dryly remarked, "48 hours with that senile old bat and a houseful of drunks directly descended from the home brew bugs from when it was an 'in' thing."

Maude turned and tapped his backside with her shoe in a similar manner to his poking and said, "As you'll recall, most of those home brew bugs staying at his house are women."

"So?" Silas asked.

Maude laughed and said, "Just my luck, 3 billion fat palookas running around this planet and I get the only one who would prefer a horse to a woman."

"So what're you complaining about?" Silas asked, "When was the last time you found either of them in our bed?"

Maude groaned and dropped her head and said, "I should hope never, either way if the day comes I do I'm chasing _both_ of you out with a pitchfork."

"Ha-ha," Silas dryly remarked.

Maude looked at her watch and said, "Hey come on, we gotta get going if we're going to make it for the next race at the dog track."

Silas rolled his eyes and behind their lids and murmured to himself, "Doo-dah, doo-dah."

"Ehhh shut up," Maude said as she swung her leg up and kicked him.

* * *

Silas looked around at the spectators at the dog track and when he saw Maude coming back towards their seats, he took his foot off the chair next to him so she could sit down.

"So who'd you bet on?" he asked.

"Fifty bucks to win on Sweet Jake," Maude said as she sat down.

"Who's that?" Silas asked.

"The loser, I'll guarantee you," Maude told him, "So tell me again how they train these dogs to run the races?"

"I told you how they do it," Silas replied.

"I know you did but I still don't get it," she said, "Horses have jockeys to get them around the tracks, but the dogs work alone."

Everybody was on edge waiting for the race to start, and Maude leaned over to her husband and said, "It's funny ain't it?"

"Huh, what?" Silas asked as he turned to her.

"Well think about it, who was that idiot that said 'it doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game'? Who was stupid enough to say that?"

"I don't know," Silas said dismissively.

"Yeah well whoever said it, was wrong," Maud said as she folded her arms, "That's why there's only one winner, and no matter how many players there are, everybody else loses. It's kind of like life, there's only one way to be born, but there are a million ways to die, and for these dogs winning and losing _is_ life and death."

They watched as the race started and saw five greyhounds come running out from the starting line. Maude didn't say anything but she clenched her teeth together and didn't look half the time at watching four dogs running neck and neck, and the fifth one trailing far behind.

"Dead last," she grimaced when the race was over.

"You knew he was going to lose," Silas told her.

Maude kicked the air a few times with one foot before putting it down and said grimly, "Well, he's just outlived his usefulness."

"Come on," Silas said as they got up, "Let's go."

* * *

They managed to turn around and off onto the empty street straight ahead of the truck that the dog's owner was driving. When the car stalled in the middle of the road, the truck hit the brakes and a second later the man driving got out to see what was going on. Silas and Maude got out of their car to face him and Maude started the conversation by asking, "You're the man who ran Sweet Jake in the race today?"

"Yeah, that's right," the man answered. He was a rough looking man somewhere in his late 40s or early 50s, and he didn't strike Maude as being too concerned with the fate of the animals in his care.

"That's the…third race he's lost, isn't it?" Maude asked as she went around to the back of the truck where the dog's cage was kept. She could hear the greyhound whimpering and tried sticking her hand in through the bars but the best she could manage were three fingers to let the dog sniff and lick.

"Yeah, yeah it is," the man answered, almost sounding sorry for it.

"So I guess it's the glue factory for Sweet Jake now, eh?" Maude asked.

The man didn't get the joke and said, "No, horses get sent to the glue factory, greyhounds just get put down."

"Yes, I'm _very_ aware," Maude said as she slipped her hand onto the cage's lock, "A dog loses a couple of races and suddenly it's outlived its usefulness, no matter that it's still young and healthy."

"Hey," the man scratched his head and looked from her to her husband and asked, "What are you folks, some of those bleeding heart animal rights people or something?"

"Not exactly," Maude said as she pushed the levers that released the bolt on the cage, "We just recognize that some forms of life are more important than others, and that includes an animal's right to life over its owner's."

The man was quickly losing his patience with these people and turned back to Maude and started to ask, "Hey what do you…" but didn't get any further.

Though Maude was no stranger to violence, she still preferred to wait until the man stopped making any sounds before she turned around to see the completed work. There he lay, dead in the middle of the road, the side of his head bashed in and the ground beneath him covered in blood. Her husband stood over the man looking down at the corpse as if uncertain about something.

"This dog still has some use left in him, _you_ sir do not, and you never did," Maude said as she glanced down at the dead body, then she turned back to the dog in the cage and opened the door.

Silas went over to the truck chuckling as he got acquainted with the dog, it quickly took a liking to him and he picked it up and carried it in his arms over to their car.

"It's too bad they have to mark these dogs," Maude said as she closed the door to the backseat, "If they weren't tattooed we could find somebody else to take them in."

"What for, you got a problem with dogs?" Silas asked.

"Certainly not, but I'm running out of reasons to justify having 100 greyhounds at our home," Maude told him as they got in the front seat.

"Well, I think enough time has passed that we can see about finding some other people to take the older ones," Silas told her, "After all, it's been a few months since their owners were 'horribly and mysteriously killed', by this time we can claim that they just stumbled onto our property and we fed them for a few days."

Maude nodded and replied, "These bastards are only half the problem, there are also the dirtballs that breed these dogs excessively for racing, as if the damn pet store mills weren't bad enough."

"Lot of money in it," Silas said as they pulled out of there, "After all, dog racing pays out smaller amounts so few people have to pay taxes on their winning wages and so they come back frequently to bet on more races and win a lot more small amounts of money, _and_ it goes without saying it's far easier and faster to breed dogs for racing than it is horses. Figure in 11 months for each new horse that comes one at a time against 2-3 months for a greyhound and 5-7 pups in each litter, and more than one of them is going to be likely for racing, so it only makes sense _why_ they breed the dogs so rapidly for racing."

"Sure, they breed them so fast it doesn't matter if they kill 30,000 a year just because they lose a couple of races, they're all expendable in the eyes of the owners," Maude said, "Just kill one dog and replace it with another. Funny, when people cease to serve a purpose everybody likes to frown on killing them for the same reason of being humane and convenient."

"Mm-hmm," Silas responded.

"Of course," Maude said with a huff, "I suppose it's like that other thing we talked about. Those damn poachers that go after the baby seals, take that thing, what's it called?"

"Hakapik," Silas told her.

"Right, they take the hakapik and put a spike in the baby seal's skull and then hook it on the thing and haul it off, and if they get the older seals they shoot them first, _then_ spike them and drag them…call it the most _humane_ way to kill them," Maude snorted and told her husband, "I'll guarantee you, if you did the same thing to people, used that damn hakapik to split _their_ skulls, they would _not_ see it as being the most humane way to kill them, bunch of hypocrites."

A minute passed and a light bulb went on in her head and she looked to her husband and said, "Hey you know, we ought to do that. We ought to take one of those clubs and use that on the next bunch of bastards we go after."

Silas chuckled and said, "You _would_ say that, that's all you ever do, bash people's brains out with a club, and I ought to know."

"Well come on," Maude responded, "As it is those dumb cops aren't able to put 2 and 2 together on these 'murders', bring a seal club into the picture and they won't even be able to put 1 and 1 together, nobody would ever see it coming."

Silas thought about it for a minute.

"So how many does this make now?" Maude asked him.

"How many what?" he asked.

"How many owners have we killed, and how many dogs have we taken back to our house?" Maude asked.

Silas scratched his head and thought of the question, and the answer, and after a couple of minutes he told her, "Let's see, we've been doing it now for what, about two years? So I'd say about 152."

Maude shrugged and said, "Well, it's a start anyway, 152 perfectly good dogs saved, and 152 worthless pieces of crap dead for proving themselves useless and...obsolete."

Silas rolled his eyes and snorted, "3 billion fat palookas running around this planet and I just _had_ to marry a Twilight Zone fan."

"That's right," Maude sneered as she leaned over to his side, "You want to make something out of it?"

"No thanks," he replied, "And you can save your threat to get ugly, it's already too late for that."

Maude turned in her seat to look at the dog that was standing up in the back and she pointed to Silas and said, "Go ahead boy, _kill_."


End file.
